


stars turn red (but it's not a bad thing)

by seventeenthya



Series: lullaby of golden stars (en) [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feelings, Hurt/Comfort, Immortality, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, TARDIS is a shipper, Team TARDIS, The Doctor (Doctor Who) is an Idiot, but he loves them all equally, jack can love as no one else in the universe, jack deserves everything, jack is a horny disaster, ninth doctor deserves more love, so jack loves him as much as he can, the doctor cares and loves, the doctor doesn't treat jack like trash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:01:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25085092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventeenthya/pseuds/seventeenthya
Summary: It's impossible not to love the Doctor.
Relationships: Ninth Doctor/Jack Harkness
Series: lullaby of golden stars (en) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1816774
Kudos: 35





	stars turn red (but it's not a bad thing)

**Author's Note:**

> \- I remember about the Doppler effect from school astronomy  
> \- I cannont write technobabble  
> \- I'm not a native speaker, so it's a translation from Russian (оригинал здесь: https://ficbook.net/readfic/9235285 и здесь: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25066756)
> 
> It's a first time for me when I do something like this, so I really could use some help with mistakes and stuff.

  1. **Physics and poetry**



Jack went out of the TARDIS (she was parked on a remote, uninhabited planet in the system of some white dwarf) later than his companions because he had to take something with him first. The Doctor, in fact, had the ability to choose beautiful _and_ peaceful places, but the TARDIS rarely allowed him to, and the Doctor had no control over her. But in there — actually, it did not seem so bad: the purple and lilac grass rippled with the light touch of the wind, and the starry sky spread out over their heads like a bottomless dome.

“I hope I'm not interrupting your date,” he said, dropping onto the grass next to the Doctor's right; to the Doctor's left sat Rose, her head tilted up at the sky.

The Doctor was looking at the stars and sometimes at her.

Now his gaze, tinged with a hint of annoyance, was directed at Jack.

“This is certanly _not_ a date,” he said, his voice harsh and indignant. It seemed tha in the Doctor’s eyes they all — all of humanity - must have been just restless, swarming children. Or moths flying into the light and burning up overnight. Jack was a free-thinking man, but even he couldn't imagine having sex with a moth — and being a moth himself was just a little bit offensive.

Rose chuckled and rolled her eyes dramatically at them.

"Of course you’re not interrupting anything, Jack. We're just looking at the stars. Desiding which place we should go to next. The Doctor tells me about this”, she glanced uncertainly at the Doctor, "shift… Red shift. About... the expansion of the universe.”

The Doctor looked at her affectionately, as if she were an ignorant, charming kitten walking through the blueprints of a superluminal rocket.

"I'd love to hear about old Doppler," Jack agreed, settling himself more comfortably. “I brought a beer. D’you want one?”

"I'm not even going to start a quite pointless lecture on the dangers of alcohol for you," the Doctor said rather indignantly, “but you could at least not suggest it…”

“I’ll have one, thanks,” Rose held out her hand, smiling a little archly. Jack grinned broadly as he handed her the open bottle. The Doctor looked as if he couldn't believe their audacity and recklessness — a man (okay, not a man) who drove them almost every day on vacation in mortal danger.

“Life's too short to worry about stuff like that, Doc,” Jack said. “And I brought you a banana milkshake."

“Oh,” the Doctor looked down at the tall glass with its striped tube and stretched a satisfied smile to his protruding ears. “That changes everything. Thanks.”

His mood changed at the click of fingers. Jack sipped from the bottle and looked up at the stars as well. The three of them were silent for a moment, sipping their drinks.

"The cosmological redshift has a lot to do with the red and blue shifts of the Doppler effect, that’s true," the Doctor said, looking up. “It’s simple — a source of waves approaching relative to the observer has an increase in the frequency of waves, while the object that is moving away has a decrease. Light is also a wave, Rose — red has a lower frequency, blue has a higher one. You understand the spectrum, don't you?”

"I shouldn't have skipped physics at school," Rose muttered. “It's a pity it wasn’t you who taught me physics in there”.

Jack chuckled, shook his head, and took another sip from the bottle. The Doctor was telling the basics of Jack’s school curriculum — very simple things, but to be fair, much more beautifully and inspiringly than anyone else. Rose looked at the former fifty-first-century time agent with a mixture of mild annoyance and resentment and took a sip of her own beer.

“Stars with a redshift in the spectrum are moving away from us — through infinite space, falling into the unknown at tremendous speeds, and they have no idea that we are looking at them and wondering where this _red_ _light comes from_ — it’s for us that they run away, but they are simply moving forward, somewhere forward, like everything else in this universe. The galaxies are shifting relative to each other, converging and diverging in this mad dance — red and blue, that's all we see, standing on a forgotten round rock, just as it is falling somewhere through space. You look at it through your telescopes and count it in letters on paper, and I see it — like this, looking up at the sky, I see the universe moving forward and the galaxies flying away from us. All of them since the Big Bang — flying, flying, flying — from singularity to infinity — and therefore the law of the _cosmological_ redshift screams to us that everything is moving away from each other. You can see it, you can observe it, and for a moment you can get a hold of it — but the stars turn red. No matter how hard you hold on, you cannot stop it.

Jack saw Rose take the Doctor's hand, both sadly and stubbornly, and cling tightly to it. He looked down at the neck of the bottle — he wanted to hold on to him, too, so ancient and wise and improbable, but Jack was hardly worthy of even being there in the first place.

He buried his left hand in the cold grass, and suddenly felt the warm touch of someone else's fingers on his dewy skin. Jack looked up in disbelief at the Doctor, who was still looking up at the sky, his left-hand gripping Rose's small hand and his right taking Jack's.

Harkness clutched the warm, dry palm like a drowning man clutching a lifebuoy, staring at the timelord in disbelief. The Doctor's face was not beautiful by beauty standards — it was too flop-eared, crudely chiseled, and his aquiline nose could be considered sullen and repulsive. Jack looked at him, at his light eyes reflecting the universe, and he was falling.

It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life, and he didn't believe it was still possible to feel so selfless in his age.

"But your TARDIS _is_ _blue,_ " Rose said, her voice simple and naive. The Doctor blew air through his nose with a kind chuckle, turning to her with the same gentle gaze. — “We don't run away. That means we're not running away, right, Doctor? We run towards.”

Jack also smiled with a chuckle, lowering his eyes. Rose had always been able to say the right thing to the Doctor without understanding the slightest law of physics or thinking of anyone but this mysterious, complex, and fascinating alien.

"Yes, Rose," the Doctor agreed. “The TARDIS is blue. We can just imagine that from the perspective of someone who sees it, the TARDIS is always blue. But the stars that we observe redshift from another point in the universe will have blueshift, and those that are blue for us will be red for someone hundreds of galaxies away." His eyes roamed the strange constellations. “But red doesn't necessarily mean bad. It's only humans who decided that. Stupid, stubborn, naive humans… Red isn't a bad color, Rose. We're all moving. We’re all falling. We are flying forward. Sitting on a rock in the middle of nowhere, we stare into the abyss, held by gravity nothing else. We are looking, looking, looking. We are still able to see so much more.

Rose rested her head on the Doctor's shoulder. Jack squeezed his hand tighter, so afraid to feel out of place — but the Doctor looked at him almost as kindly as he had at Rose, only with something complex and sad in the depths of his pale eyes.

Perhaps he knew that Jack understood a little more. Jack hoped he knew.

"We'll hold on, Doctor, until we have to let go," the captain said, nodding at their clasped hands. “It’s okay. That’ll be enough. Even if ‘forward’ doesn’t always mean ‘together’. The universe is getting bigger, isn't it?”

"I'm glad you understand," the timelord said quietly, giving him a curt nod. Jack lifted the corner of his mouth. “But I still don't like to understand it myself."

The universe is expanding tirelessly, and perhaps one day it will become as vast as the Doctor was bigger on the inside than on the outside.

There was a golden light swirling under the Doctor's skin, and Jack hoped the Doctor wouldn't know how fast the captain was falling toward it.

  1. **About biology.**



“So how do you timelords do it anyway?”

“Now hold it here,” the Doctor told him, concentrating on the TARDIS systems. Jack reached out and with his left hand pressed the accelerator close to chronomodulation, looking at how the warm yellow glow glides on the face of the Doctor. “What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean?" Jack grinned. “Sex, of course. It is not every day that I can learn a little more about the biology of a living myth.”

“Tell me again that you are only _interested in the_ _biology_ of the process," the Doctor muttered, soldering the wires in the correct sequence. Jack clung to his deft, long fingers — who uses a _soldering iron_ (even though it's surprisingly small) without damned protective gloves? he almost missed the time for his witty reply.

“I'm an inquisitive fellow, Doctor,” the captain agreed, torn between the desire to keep his eyes on the Doctor's face and the desire to understand a little more about the TARDIS's design. “Biology is amazing. Physics — you are at the right place. But my favorite is _always_ chemistry.”

Jack winked at him, but the time Lord chose to ignore it.

“Biologically, people are very similar to timelords in almost everything, except for the hearts, the differences are insignificant”. The Doctor drew back, exhaling contentedly. “We can tell Rose that we can go to Alpha Centauri now.”

"I don't want to break it to you, but she's been asleep for a long time," Jack said, brushing off his palms as he studied the TARDIS ' systems with interest. Then he glanced at the tired but enthusiastic Doctor. The Doctor always had a big smile on his face, and he always took off running. It seemed to Jack that if the Time Lord stopped, everyone would finally be able to see the endless weariness and sadness in the swirling golden haze. Perhaps that's why he didn't ever stop. “You could use one, too."

“I need a lot less sleep than you do with your fragile human bodies, " the Doctor told him in the voice of a man who hates questions about sleep because he simply _cannot_ sleep. “Go take a nap, too. We'll leave in about seven hours. I'll just... clean the matrix."

“I'll help you. The time agents were getting some upgrades, so don't worry," Jack shoved his hands in his pockets and didn't go anywhere else, “We _are_ _very_ hardy.”

The Doctor rolled his eyes briefly, catching the usual hints in the harmless phrase. He dried his hands on a towel, tossed it on the floor, and backed wearily against the wall.

"I can keep my mouth shut if I have to," Jack added hastily.

"It's hard to believe," the Doctor muttered. “This may be very strange for you, Jack, but it's not always all about you.”

_Because it's always about you,_ Jack thought, brushing his hair back with a flick of his hand. They were disheveled and stood up a little. _This whole universe is about you._

"Believe me, I know that. I just don't want — " he broke off, afraid of becoming too obvious. “I don't want to leave you here alone, Doctor. We have so little time alone. How can I miss such an opportunity?”

That's it, Jack. A flirting disaster.

“I don't understand why I'm still keeping you in the TARDIS,” said the Doctor.

“Because she likes me,” Jack laid a hand on the warm, uneven wall, patting the paneling. It seemed to him that he could pick up echoes of a powerful pulsation at his fingertips — a pulsation that sometimes made the hairs on his skin stand on end for no apparent reason. “Right, old girl?" Jack was sure the TARDIS's engines were making the agreeing noise. “And Rose likes me, too. And _you.”_

The Doctor couldn't say outright that he didn't like Jack, and Jack was grateful at least for that.

He sighed, closed his eyes, and leaned the back of his head against the wall, folding his arms across his chest.

“Absolutely unbearable.”

  1. **Bananas are good**



"I can think of a couple of interesting things you can do with bananas," Jack said, tossing the fruit in his hand.

“I don't think we want to know,” said the Doctor, steering the TARDIS, but Rose looked at the captain with carefully concealed curiosity. Jack grinned at her and peeled the banana in a few quick movements.

“Hey, Doctor,” he called the timelord, waiting for short sight in response to the hail, and immediately plunged the whole banana into his mouth, flowing into the throat, so was detained for a few moments — and as easily and quickly pulled back, showing the Doctor and Rose not damaged by the teeth fruit. The reaction to his actions was so picturesque that he laughed, burying his face in his elbow.

"Jack!” The Doctor looked more tired than scandalized.

"Jack, for God's sake," Rose said, laughing with him as the Doctor scowled at her. “Even I can't do that."

"That's why it was me who went to distract that handsome guy in a private luxury room last night, not you, sunshine," Jack said with a whorish grin and a wink at her.

“How are you even…”

“I can teach you."

“Stop it, both of you!” the Doctor interrupted, directing his displeasure more at Jack than at Rose. "Jack, either eat that banana or put it down, and stop playing with the food! Damn apes.”

"Bananas are good," Jack said philosophically, taking a bite of the fruit and tucking it into his cheek before chewing. The Doctor looked at him again with disapproval, but Jack was all too familiar with such glances — the interest in them was far stronger than the irritation.

  1. **Some of the taboo questions**



Jack was sitting on a crate of spare parts, peeling an apple with a knife. Doing something primitive with his hands was still the best way to calm down and get the thoughts in order.

“Is sex such a taboo subject for timelords, Doctor, that you would burn your eyes out at me for any little flirting?”

The Doctor was rummaging through instruments in one of the TARDIS's many storerooms, filled with funnel manipulators, particle accelerators, lasers, photoelectric multipliers, and spectroscopes. Maybe he was angry. Or just a little bit annoyed.

Perhaps Jack shouldn't have left the perimeter the Doctor had told him to guard for the sake of that sultry blue-skinned hermaphrodite. Nothing bad happened anyway, and Jack had a good time, but it _could have happened — couldn't it, Jack?_

“I'm not against flirting in general, but there's a time and a place for everything," the Doctor said, not looking at him. "Flirting is great. It can be fun. Or pleasant. I don't know.”

“Oh, but why are the time and the place wrong whenever you're around me? Does your existence cancel out all places for flirting within a hundred meters?”

"I don't —" the Doctor began irritably, then stopped. “I'm not that sullen,” he added with a little too much confidence — which meant he suddenly started to doubt something.

“You are sullen. Don't worry — it's still sexy.”

“Even a stone can turn you on.”

“In your pants?"

“Jack.”

Jack laughed, looking down at his folded hands.

The Doctor turned reluctantly to look at him, looking away from the shelves and observing the former time agent thoughtfully, as if for the first time he had forced himself to actually see him. The TARDIS buzzed in the ears, soothing and calming. Jack was in his mid-thirties, but he'd never tended to forget himself completely and expect nothing in return.

"Sex is not taboo for timelords,” the Doctor said bluntly. “It wasn't ... it wasn't taboo," he corrected himself with a pained expression on his face. “But over many centuries of civilisation, it has lost almost all the meaning that you put into it. Billions of years, actually. We preferred pure reason to all that was physical; true unity laid in telepathy, in the contact of minds rather than bodies.”

“So the timelords are just a bunch of boring snobs in fancy dresses?" Jack remarked, sure that the Doctor would be offended or annoyed again.

The Doctor chuckled for some reason.

"Yes, Jack, the timelords were just a bunch of boring snobs in fancy dresses," he agreed. "Evolution doesn't always work the way it should. That's why I ran away from them. But they were still my race... and Gallifrey was my home.”

He stopped and was silent for a moment, leaning back against the bare wall between the shelves. He was looking past Jack and seemed to have withdrawn into himself. Jack didn't interfere.

“What about sex," the Doctor continued, much to the other's surprise: he didn't mind sitting next to him for a few hours in silence. "Sex... it could have been avoided even for conception, the technology was on a par, but we weren't obligated to avoid it. This is quite a pleasant process, but not necessary at all. There is no such thing like I lose my head when I see an aesthetically beautiful naked body. I stand high enough in the chain of evolution to control my reactions and needs. Bodies do not matter, all the thing considered, so sex isn't more important than the need for... Dunno, a nice massage from time to time?”

"I don't see anything wrong with a massage," Jack said.

“Yes, but people don't see it that way. For them, it is immediately ... Serious. Important. They mix in too many complex emotions. I don't want my actions to be seen as a promise that I can't keep.”

“But you've slept with people, haven't you?" Jack asked an incredibly disturbing question.

“I'm over nine hundred years old, Jack. Yes, I've slept with people. And not only with people. If it is by mutual consent, desire and interest, if I’m really attracted to someone’s personality, if we have a suitable time and place, if the person understands that I cannot stay forever — then, of course, why not? Plus... I have a weakness for famous historical figures. Cleopatra… An incredible woman.

"You know, Doctor," Jack pointed out, “I fit your criteria for most of the parameters. Unless, of course, my personality is too ugly for you.”

The Doctor looked at him condescendingly and smiled.

“No.”

“'No, your personality is not ugly,' or 'no, don't even think about it’? I'm getting pretty mixed signals, to be honest. So can I suggest you a massage?” Jack grinned. “Or just a blow job?”

“I'm not going to sleep with you, Jack," the Doctor informed him gently, instead of being outraged again by his bluntness.

“Do you really think I'd think it was something complicated or serious?" Jack snorted, and almost threw away the peeled apple that he was turning over in his hands without any desire to eat it. “It's just about two adults and a way to relax a little and get rid of all this heavy, dark shit from the past that's stuck in the head.”

He thought he saw the Doctor's disapproval in his eyes, so he drew back and lowered his head, chastising himself for the outburst. Jack didn't really want the Doctor to know how huge his crush really was, or how tiny he felt.

“Sorry. I shouldn't have…”

“You'll have to understand that I'm not going to be another trophy on your long list of victories, " the Doctor explained, rather patiently, but distantly. “I understand that it might be a _challenge_ for you to fuck a timelord, but I don't want to get involved in your…”

Jack put the apple on the box next to him, got to his feet, and took a step closer to the Doctor, pursing his lips.

_"I offer you this because you are the most incredible being that exists in the universe — I was a selfish coward before I met you, and now I am ready to die for you and give you everything I can, because you have shown me how amazing and selfless life can be. Unfortunately or fortunately, it just so happens that sex is one of the few things in my life I've mastered perfectly, and I know that we'll both be a little better off if you trust me and don't think any worse of me than I really am.»_

Jack shook his head.

"I don't see you as a trophy," Jack tried to explain. “As I said, it's just two adults and a way to get away from it and have a good time together. I can see how much you love everything in this universe... except yourself. I know that look. I - " he broke off. "Just for once - accept yourself, damn it. We must live for today, Doctor, or not at all. I’m – I’m just trying to help. And I want you to see how gorgeous you are.”

The Doctor looked at him for a long moment, with a hint of thoughtfulness. Jack didn't know what reaction to expect and was about to drop something insignificant and leave - he could have passed the time in the library or the Jacuzzi without being seen by the Doctor, but the Doctor seemed to have made a decision for himself, raised his eyebrows and nodded.

“All right”.

“All right?" Jack didn't understand and didn't believe. "I mean —" he raised his eyebrows in a silent ‘can this really mean what I think it does?’

“Yes.”

“Are you serious?"

“You suggested an idea. I found it unsuitable and refused. You've made a case for it. I've reconsidered my point of view. This is how two adults deal with issues that arise between them, Jack, isn't it?”

"Yes," Jack agreed, not too sure, but didn't move. To be honest, he had not expected to go this far.

“Have you changed your mind yet?" the Doctor asked and _grinned_ , rising the left corner of his mouth up a little — he _was_ _teasing_ him!

"No," Jack said too quickly, walking even closer to the Doctor and hesitating. Their faces were at the same level and closer than ever before. But the boundaries of what the Doctor might have meant were too blurred. Could Jack have kissed him? But was it really about kissing? “Just trying to figure out how far you're willing to go."

Jack's gaze followed the straight line of the Doctor's calmly closed lips, then hesitated for a moment, met the Doctor's eyes, and sank smoothly and quickly to his knees. The Doctor watched him closely, neither reacting nor objecting. Jack ran his hands down the timelord’s body, pulling his sweater up, and pressed his parted lips just below Doctor’s navel, his hot, wet breath sliding down Doctor’s skin. Jack left a light kiss on the not too strongly developed oblique muscle of the lateral press, unbuttoning timelord’s pants with an almost professional movement. The Doctor exhaled softly through his mouth, leaning his head back in relaxation.

"You can put your hand on the back of my head if you want to control the process a little more," Jack said, pulling down his pants and underwear. "Wow, I thought this would take longer,” he said, eyeing the Doctor's erect cock with some interest.

"I control the body's reactions," the Doctor reminded him, and Jack felt a soft hand on the back of his head.

“ _This_ much?” Jack asked with a grin. “And how will you control it further?"

“That depends on you.”

Jack grinned very broadly and very vulgarly, raising the flirtatious gaze of his blue eyes to the Doctor's face, and, without taking his eyes off, slowly planted his hot mouth on Doctor’s cock.

  1. **A helping hand**



“You're an idiot!” the Doctor informed him loudly. Jack winced slightly. “Are you all right?"

“Is he all right?" Rose's worried voice came over his left ear.

“He’ll live,” the Doctor told her, lifting Jack's unresponsive body and pressing the wound on captain’s shoulder with his hand. “It should be dragged to the medical bay. I'll help him there. The projectile had a large dose of toxin in it, and the body won’t respond well to it.”

Rose ducked under Jack's left shoulder, taking a small portion of the weight. The Doctor took the right one, dragging it doggedly forward.

"Jack, hold on, please," Rose muttered. "I'm sorry! Jack? Doctor, can he hear us? Why doesn't he answer?”

“It's probably a little hard for him to move his tongue yet. For once. I think he can hear you perfectly well.”

“He saved me, you know?" Rose muttered miserably. “I didn’t… I really haven't seen him, Jack! You shouldn't have thrown yourself like that… It's all my fault.”

"Don't be silly, Rose," the Doctor told her gently, shaking Jack harder to keep human’s weight on his shoulders. “He knew what he was doing. The captain is too stubborn to be seriously harmed by such nonsense.”

But the look he gave Jack was warm, grateful, and touched with a shadow of concern.

“It'll be all right.”

It was not clear who the Doctor was talking to.

Jack closed his eyes wearily.

When he opened them again, he was lying on the hard bed of the medical bay, staring up at the blue blurring lights ahead of him. Then the lights were gone. Rose's blurry face blocked them. Jack blinked slowly, trying to focus. Rose was still covered in a filthy greenish-brown slime. Great. He hadn’t been out for twenty-four hours.

“Doctor, you said he was going to get better, but he's not responding to anything at all," her voice came out, even matching the movement of her lips.

“At all?” the Doctor's face appeared next to hers. “That's not true. The pupils are already responding. See? "The Doctor blinded him with a flashlight. “Something like that. You saw it, the wound is clean, I've started detoxing — he'll get better. Detoxification will take several hours. Go take a shower, I’ll watch him.”

Yes, it was probably a very good idea. Rose got the worst of it when that bastard blew up. Her blond hair was stuck together in unsightly icicles, and her face was brown, like pictures of island aborigines in children's books, except that the whites of her eyes were almost blue in sharp contrast.

(Today absolutely everything went NOT according to the plan.)

With another doubtful look at Jack, Rose left the medical bay. The Doctor took another careful look at the instrument readings and Jack's condition.

Jack tried to move. His body felt like jelly, but the touch returned to his skin — and he understood he was tied up for some reason. Tight straps at the wrists, one across the chest, one over the hips, two at each ankle.

“Why am I...” he said with an effort.

“Oh, look who's talking!" the Doctor exclaimed. “You couldn't have done that two minutes ago, when Rose was here, could you? She thinks I'm trying to kill you here or something!"

Jack exhaled through his nose and groaned in response. It was true that his tongue was working with difficulty.

— Why…

"Ah. Why are you tied up? To avoid you hurting yourself. For a while, you'll be really lost as to how your body works. The toxin messes up with all the muscles. I will release you when it has fallen to at least one-fourth of what is in your body now. Try to rest. I think you've been tied up in far worse ways in your life.

The Doctor sat down in the chair next to him, taking a pencil from behind his ear and beginning to solve some crossword puzzles, occasionally muttering to himself some strange facts about historical figures that he came across.

Rose was also a historical figure to Jack. It was funny to think of it that way.

And who was the Doctor? In what timeline did his planet exist when the Time War brought it to an end? And why was it destroyed for him at any given time? Jack had a good understanding of the laws of time, but understanding the Doctor was sometimes difficult, even for him.

The body felt really strange.

Jack felt like he wanted a pineapple.

Then - to make the Doctor speak more clearly.

Then — then he wanted something more specific and familiar. The groin felt heavy and hot.

"Doctor," Jack managed to say. “I understand everything, but ... Maybe ... you still can ... free... one of my hands?.."

The Doctor looked up from the magazine and glanced at Jack with a hint of concern. When he realized what the problem was, his anxiety gave way to a tired, ‘this was to be expected’ sneer.

“You're impossible, Jack.”

"Yeah," Jack said, breathing a little faster, his eyes closing for a moment. “So what about the hand?"

“Toxin’s level is still very high.” The Doctor's gaze flickered over the instruments, and he stood up, stepping closer to Jack. “It's not my problem, but what if your fingers suddenly cramp, hmm?"

Jack grimaced in distaste.

"Exactly," said the Doctor, but his eyes softened. “It's the toxin that drives every system in your body mad. There is nothing unexpected about that.”

"Or maybe it's your accent," Jack muttered, turning his head away. He was really hot — a little hotter than he should have been. The Doctor touched his perspiring forehead with a cool hand.

“You'll flirt on your deathbed, won't you, Jack?" timelord chuckled, unzipping Jack's pants. Jack groaned hoarsely as he felt the touch of cool, confident fingers closing over his painfully hard cock. “It's just a helping hand, lad.”

It wasn't the strangest sex Jack had ever had — was it really sex? but the heat in the head and the body, confused thoughts and reactions, inability to move or to swing the hips forward fast, but smooth movements of the alien hand and a dark, calm, confident figure of the Doctor with murky bluish lights in the background did all experience the unique sharp. Jack seemed to have come ignominiously fast. The Doctor wiped his hand on a towel and tossed it to the damaged rag.

"Thanks," Jack said weakly.

"Get some rest, pal”.

The Doctor took a step along the bed, closer to the pillow, and leaned down to touch Jack’s wet forehead with his lips, running a hand lightly through Jack’s tousled black hair. For a moment, Jack felt the touch of something powerful on his mind. After a moment, he was gone.

  1. **Sleep and related problems**



  
"You won't last much longer," the Doctor said, peering at the captain over the console.

Staying with the Doctor in the evenings — their designated evenings, because keeping track of time was really difficult — by the TARDIS console when Rose went to her room to sleep, Jack tried to calculate how many days the Doctor had been awake. It turned out to be more than a week.

Today, he almost lost his footing as he ran away from a huge amoeba that was rapidly catching up with them on its pseudopods, and loved to eat aluminum, people, and police blue boxes.

Now he couldn't even help the Doctor arrange a routine check of the TARDIS's systems. The time agents were tougher than ordinary humans, but not that hardy. His head was empty, except for a faint humming sound that vibrated through the walls of the skull. His eyes were wide open now — he had passed the state when he hardly could keep them open like two days ago - but his thoughts were barely moving in his head, and his body felt like a doll made of cotton wool.

"Yes?” he said, a few seconds after what would have been a normal response. “I think I'm still full of energy. Let's see which one of us goes down first.”

"You," the Doctor said without hesitation. “I can no longer risk your life because of your stubbornness. Go to your bed. That's an order, captain.”

"I don't think that's a good idea, with all due respect, sir," Jack said, trying to walk around the console and almost knocking over one of the levers. The Doctor caught his wrist in a steely grip. Oh, Jack loved those fingers.

“I didn't ask for your review of my idea. I told you to go to bed.”

“Will you come with me?"

"Jack, for God's sake!” the Doctor snapped. “There is a time and a place, and it is neither here nor now! Do you want me to carry you?"

Jack took about ten seconds to come up with a witty response. Then he let out a weary sigh, resting his palms on the console and admitting defeat. It was really hard to think. Not sleeping for more than four days was fraught, even for time agents.

"I'm sorry," he muttered, not looking at the Doctor. “I don't know what I was hoping for. Your loneliness bothers me. I didn't want you to…”

Good, now he's talking too much, like he was drunk out of his mind. The Doctor sighed and shook his head.

The Doctor grabbed him under the ribs and helped to move forward, pulling him along. Jack couldn't remember later exactly how they got to his room — it seemed like the old girl TARDIS had helped them. The shower was a separate ordeal, given that the Doctor was waiting outside in Jack’s bedroom. The hot water buzzed in the ears and sent goosebumps down his spine. Sleep. Sleep is good. Why does the Doctor ignore it?

"That's better," the Doctor said softly, as Jack fell his head on his pillow. It seemed to Jack that his eyes would instantly roll back and his brain would switch off, but he also seemed to underestimate his own body.

“Stay,” he muttered to the Doctor, who was already leaving the room. He turned from the doorway and sighed again.

"You know, Rose is a lot less of a problem. She's only nineteen, but she's much more independent.”

"Apparently, you lose your independence with age," Jack said, surprised at his ability to parry barbs while half-fainting. “Look at yourself.”

The Doctor froze slightly.

"I know what PTSD is," Jack said with difficulty, "maybe the timelords don't call it that, but the result is that something terrible in your past is preventing you from moving on. Accept yourself, learn to live with it... sleep with it. I'm not the one who has trouble sleeping.”

"You can't imagine what I've done, Jack," the Doctor said coolly, not expecting the captain to understand. “It's not something that makes you easily love and accept yourself. And sleep in the bed.”

"It's easier for me, I guess," Jack said, closing his eyes. “There was a shooting. When I was a kid. In my village. I lost my brother. I lost my father. Blamed myself for so long. I blamed myself…”

The Doctor walked slowly over to him, sitting down on the bed, and touched his arm in mute support. Jack didn't know whether to be happy or reproach himself for his loose tongue. He had never tried to open up like that before.

"I only understood one thing," Jack said at last. “It was impossible to sleep alone.” He opened his eyes, looking straight up at the ceiling of the room — the TARDIS. “Please, tell him, gorgeous.”

The door to the room closed softly. The TARDIS was a smart girl.

The Doctor sighed.

"I don't think that's going to work."

"You won't know until you give it a chance."

_Gimme chance, gimme chance, gimme chance._

The Doctor looked at him thoughtfully and sadly, and after a few more seconds of thinking, he pulled off his leather jacket and boots, running a tentative hand over the back of his head. He tossed his jacket on the chair with his clothes and lied down slowly on the pillow next to Jack.

(When did the second pillow appear on Jack's bed?)

(Did Jack mention that the TARDIS was a gorgeous beautiful smart girl?)

The Doctor stretched out on the bed, and that was the only thing that kept Jack from finally passing out; he gave the Doctor a shove in the shoulder, turning him on his side, crawling closer and throwing his arm over the tense timelord’s body, pulling him closer. Two hearts were pounding slowly and powerfully under his hand, and if Jack could still think and take responsibility for his actions, he would have thought that he was this casually holding in his arms the immortal Time Lord of old legends — a living God — with a love for bananas, leather jackets, and strange early twenty-first-century music.

"Why _am_ _I_ a small spoon?" the Doctor was indignant after half a minute.

"Doctor," Jack said very weakly, trying to focus his elusive mind to form the thought into a sentence, "with all due respect, shut up.”

  1. **come to me in the night hours**



The Doctor wasn't in Jack’s bed in the morning, and they didn't talk about it; but about five days later — it was hard to count, so Jack just counted as night any time Rose went to bed — he again silently appeared at the door of Jack's room, frowned, stripped off his sweater and jeans this time, just as silently lay on Jack’s bed, pulling the blanket to himself. Jack didn't make an attempt to bother him but stayed in his own room and tried to sleep.

After a while, the Doctor moved closer. It was good to hear him breathing.

Jack smiled.

The Doctor continued to visit his room from time to time.

  1. **Nothing superfluous**



The Doctor was fucking Jack with smooth, strong thrusts, mockingly slow, looking with his bright, intense eyes, as if directly into the soul. Jack had never kissed him first — it seemed to him that this would immediately violate some invisible boundary of personal space and make their relationship too _personal_. In other relationships, and even non-relationships without the shadow of a commitment, he adored snogging just as much as all other points of pleasurable physical intimacy — but not here.

Perhaps because it was all too personal for Jack from the very beginning.

The Doctor was kissing him, apparently not bothering about such conventions.

(Too professionally for a person who claimed not to care about such silly little things as sex and kissing.)

The slow pace was driving Jack crazy. He moaned low — he whimpered — and tried to speed it up, but the Doctor's cool fingers on his taut thighs held him in an iron grip.

The time agents were tougher than ordinary humans; the time lords were tougher than both. Jack leaned forward in an undulating motion, and the Doctor chuckled easily, keeping the rhythm the same.

"You’re impossible son of a bitch," Jack muttered hoarsely. They will need to try the rider pose — at least this will give him the necessary scope for action.

In the meantime, all he could do was flounce under the timelord's wiry, dry body, hoping that, overall, he would come to a good end.

  1. **but do you really care**



“One day a bullet like this one will be your last,” the Doctor said very grimly as he plunged the tweezers into the skin and flesh on Jack's thigh. Jack arched up, clutching the bright pink rubber dog bone tightly between his teeth- it was a wonder what devices the TARDIS had at hand in an hour of need. He wanted to swear loudly. It was a good thing Rose had been sent away by the Doctor, and she didn't need to see or hear all this.

"Better me than you or Rose," Jack answered wearily a little later, spitting out the damn bone, after the bullet had clattered on the iron tray and the Doctor had removed the bleeding hole in his leg with a tissue regenerator from the sixty-seventh century.

“You're talking nonsense. You're lucky to be in the TARDIS — if I didn't have the equipment here, you'd be limping for the rest of your life. This isn't a joke, Jack.”

"I know it’s not a joke," Jack said, raising his voice to meet the Doctor's eyes. His own were slightly red and wet with pain, but the blue irises were still clear. “I'm taking this on quite deliberately, I have to prove to you that I’m not here to be a nuisance or a third wheel.”

“No one thinks you're a third wheel!" the Doctor said in an extremely scandalized tone, as if he had never really thought of it that way.

“Don't be a hypocrite, Doctor, we both know that Rose's life is far more important to you than mine — I'm fine with that!" Jack snapped, weary and harsh. “It's just... there's no such thing as white lie. Just... don’t.”

The Doctor stared at him as if he couldn't quite believe he was actually hearing what he was hearing. The timelord took a slow breath.

“I do care about you, Jack. If less than about Rose — it's not about the level of... my love for you all, it's about the level of responsibility I put on myself when I take you on board of the TARDIS.

“What do you mean?" Jack shook his head.

"I just think you can take care of yourself better than a nineteen-years-old girl from the twenty-first century," the Doctor said simply, "even though I sometimes think that's a mistake. I guess you don't have to be treated like a porcelain doll. I trust you.”

"Oh," Jack’s response was highly intellectual because the Doctor's words were not what he had expected. He thought he could hear a faint crackling around his own ribs. _‘I trust you’_ from the Doctor was worth all the damn bullets and shells that landed on his body.

"I care about you," the Doctor repeated articulately, looking straight at Jack.

Jack could still see the universe in his eyes and the golden haze under his skin, and Jack was falling, falling, _falling._

  1. **like the world’s ending**



"I wish I'd never met you, Doctor," Jack said, taking a step toward him, thinking ‘That’s the end.’

Jack held on as hard as he could — sometimes, perhaps, too hard — but everything in this universe is moving away from each other, and the spectrum of stars is turning red.

— I was much better off as coward.

Last things last, everything had been coming to this conclusion for a long time — it was stupid to be surprised.

The heart was very still, and so was the head. Dying for the right things like the universe, human lives, and _love_ seemed like a pretty good outcome of his not-so-honest life.

Jack pulls the Doctor's face down to his and for one endless moment very chastely kisses his gently responding lips.

Now, at this very moment, Jack _knows_ that this kiss will last him for the rest _of his life_.

**+1.**

He's not as wrong as it may seem.

Billions of years later, he sees that face again.


End file.
